Tag: Mount Clare

A large brick building with a gable roof.

Second annual Preservation Pitch Party donates $3,500 to creative local heritage projects

Baltimore Heritage’s second annual preservation micro-grant pitch party on last Monday at Whitehall Mill ended in a happy surprise. Southway Builders and FreedomCar made the unexpected decision to offer matching gifts and expand our micro-grant funding pool from $1,500 to $3,500. The result? Instead of just giving out four gifts, all seven groups that pitched an idea received $500 to make it happen.

On behalf of everybody at Baltimore Heritage, congratulations to the seven organizations, and sincere thanks to micro-grant donors Ms. Brigid Goody, Southway Builders, and Freedom Car!

The seven projects span the city from east to west Baltimore, including:

  • Beloved Community Services Corporation at Union Baptist Church is working with the Baltimore Museum of Art to launch Soul Café: a project to create a safe space for community art engagement in Upton’s Marble Hill.
  • Civic Works is making a new exhibit at Clifton Mansion showcasing an antebellum call-bell system and improving visitor experience on tours for their Legacy Education Project.
  • H.L. Mencken House is buying garden supplies for volunteers to beautify the front stoop and improve the home’s back garden.
  • Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum is buying books and organizing a new Saturday Civil Rights history book club for teens and young adults.
  • Mount Clare Museum House is planning new special weekend tours celebrating Mount Clare’s one hundred years as a house museum
  • Poe Baltimore is designing and printing a set of postcards featuring historic images of the Poe House.
  • Preservation Society of Fells Point is planning to secure and stabilize the Caulker’s Houses on Wolfe Street, the only surviving eighteenth-century timber frame buildings left standing in Baltimore

Thank you to everyone who submitted proposals for the pitch party and everyone who came out on October 3. We plan to check in with the seven award-winning projects and share updates on their fantastic projects over the next few months. Stay tuned!

Tucking in tours with the holidays

This Sunday, November 15, architect David Gleason is leading the final walking tour of Fell’s Point in our series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Robert Long House with the Preservation Society. Mr. Gleason’s tour will focus on the making of modern Fell’s Point, from the fabled “Highway Fight” in the 1960s and 1970s to ongoing efforts to ensure that this waterfront community retains its charm.

We are also pleased to announce two holiday-themed tours in early December. On December 1, we are exploring Mt. Clare, the richly preserved 1760 colonial home of Charles Carroll that will be decked out for the holidays. And on December 9, you can find us at St. Mary’s Seminary, the grand edifice on Northern Parkway that is home to the nation’s oldest Catholic seminary.

Finally, if you haven’t yet been up in the Washington Monument or Patterson Park Observatory, join our Monumental City Sunday morning tours of these great places this month.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Mount Clare Mansion

For our 50th anniversary year, Baltimore Heritage is posting a new image each week featuring one of Baltimore’s historic buildings and the story of how preservation took part in Baltimore history. Our images and captions for this series are provided by Dr. John Breihan, a professor of history and preservation at Loyola University and a vice-president for Baltimore Heritage. The very first image of the year is of the 1763 Mount Clare Museum House,

Mount Clare Mansion, image courtesy Jack Breihan, 2009

Probably the oldest structure standing in Baltimore City is the Mount Clare Mansion in Carroll Park. A perfect five-part Georgian Palladian plantation house, Mount Clare was built about 1760. It was saved by the Colonial Dames of America, who operate it as a house museum.